News

On Friday, October 15th, fifteen CAA members attended the Metropolitan Brewing Happy Hour. This was CAA's first in-person event since the start of the pandemic.

It was great catching up and seeing other fellow archivists. Everyone had fun on the outside patio next to the river while enjoying good food, drinks, and company. 

Thank you to all who joined us and we hope to have more in-person events down the line. 

If you attended this event and took photos, please consider sharing and uploading them here. 

On September 29, 2021, the Curating & Exhibitions Interest Group hosted its third virtual meet-up with the topic “High-Tech, Low-Tech, On-site, Off-site: Bringing Digital Technology Into Library Exhibit Work.” Chelsea Kaufman, Library Exhibition Designer, The University of Chicago and Juan Denzer, Engineering and Computer Science Librarian, Syracuse University Library gave focused overviews on projects they completed that brought in audio, visual, and computer-generated technologies into their exhibition work. Chelsea discussed how she created videos of curator talks and embed them into digital web exhibits, as well as the processes for iPhone videography and audio transcription for accessibility. Juan Denzer demonstrated how he has used touch and sound components into exhibits, and discussed how librarians can adapt Bare Conductive Touch Board, Xboxes and gaming equipment such as AR Magic Book into exhibit interactives.

Moderators Carol Ng-He, Digital Collections Curator at the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago, and Patti Gibbons, Head of Collection Management at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, guided the Q & A after Chelsea and Juan’s presentation. 

A total of eighteen attendees participated in the event.

A recording of the meet-up is available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PZx3ShzJlhboLTFV4RJUXgJMnbU8Kp8s/view?usp=sharing

Copies of Chelsea Kaufman's slides are available here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yLAbgUs8okEO1fES2k-9sIKqaUqW3Rxw/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116171446116710502195&rtpof=true&sd=true

Copies of Juan Denzer's slides are available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qkjG3l0moWK0yb9iPZbwm1eEUlEPNQCd/view?usp=sharing

On Thursday, May 20th, fifteen CAA members attended the Tips, Tricks, Successes & Lessons Learned virtual event. The guest speakers were Sara Chapman, the Executive Director of the Media Burn Archive, and Andy Meyer, the Director of the F.M. Johnson Archives and Special Collections at North Park University.

Andy started the event off and explained that he received a grant in order to deal with AV materials and the need for a technical inventory of the film collection. His presentation discussed the process of getting that technical inventory from an Excel spreadsheet into an EAD finding aid. He used Open Refine in order to accomplish this and shared his screen with attendees so they could get an idea of the project details, how everything worked, and the lessons he learned. 

Sara discussed both a trick and success dealing with virtual events Media Burn had hosted over the last year titled Virtual Talks with Video Activists. The focus was on making them interactive and to use the events to create community. She illustrated how she uses Streamlabs OBS, which is an open source software, in order to optimize Zoom for motion and the tricks she learned to make sure the software runs smoothly. Sara also played a short clip from one of the virtual talks so attendees could see how it worked.

Thank you to everyone who attended the virtual event and showed great interest in the talk with their comments and questions. A special thanks to Andy and Sara for taking the time to speak to CAA members!

On April 27, 2021, the Curating & Exhibitions Interest Group hosted its second virtual meet-up with the topic “Creative Changes: Keeping Outreach Going During the Pandemic.” David Greenstein, Lecturer in Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago, presented a talk about a project at UIC where special collections provided archival resources to students in a semester-long for-credit virtual course. He covered ways he, as an instructor, thought creatively during the pandemic to make collection materials accessible to students he was teaching how to curate exhibits and work with archival and special collections material. David taught students to create virtual exhibitions using surrogates of primary source materials and Scalar open-source eb-based software for multi-media online publications.

Moderators Carol Ng-He, Digital Collections Curator at the Center for the Art of East Asia at the University of Chicago, and Patti Gibbons, Head of Collection Management at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, guided the Q & A after David Greenstein’s presentation.

A total of fourteen attendees participated in the event.

A recording of the meet-up is available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15d7Te-J24HEC_FoA8mBEO2tCayxz8Pwh/view?usp=sharing

Carol Ng-He and Patti Gibbons, co-leads of the Curating and Exhibitions Interest Group teamed up and wrote a helpful how-to book, Exhibits and Displays: A Practical Guide for Librarians, Rowman & Littlefield, April 2021. Their book explains how to kick-start and grow a library exhibit program through expert advice, insights from professional literature, and winning case studies that cover exhibition development from conceptual planning through de-installation packing and evaluation. Please enjoy a 30% discount with promo code RLFANDF30.

The voting for the CAA Steering Committee for 2021-2023 has begun and will continue through next Wednesday, March 31, 2021 at 5pm.

If you're an active member, you should be receiving an invitation in your email to vote. If it's not in your inbox, please check your spam folder. If it's not in the spam folder, please email us at info@chicagoarchivists.org.

The candidates' statement of interest can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hfK76BxnBmTHIhEwaCVxkoV76Y8MIvh0Lh-N6eKq-6g/edit?usp=sharing

This is the last week of #JoinCAA2021 and your last opportunity to win a CAA-branded journal for new members or a $15 gift card for referring members. 

If you’ve been hesitating to join, don’t wait! For existing members, refer your friends and colleagues and you could win too!

From Brittan Nannenga and Jill Waycie, outgoing co-chairs of the Outreach and Member Engagement subcommittee:

Jill: I joined CAA as someone newer to the field and was pretty intimidated by the prospect of getting involved in the Society of American Archivists or even the Midwest Archives Conference. What I really appreciate about CAA is that I have had the opportunity to be involved and co-chair a subcommittee at a level I was comfortable with, which built my confidence to move forward. It’s also an incredibly valuable space to get to know other colleagues in the area, share knowledge and ideas, and support each other. 

Brittan: The stories from CAA members about the benefits of membership that have been posted throughout this year’s drive are familiar and consistent. These seem to be the tried-and-true benefits of joining CAA: opportunities to expand your local network, learn from your colleagues, gain leadership experience, engage socially with your professional peers, and develop friendships along the way. Much about this past year of the pandemic has been unfamiliar and inconsistent, and the realities of social distancing and quarantine have made expanding your network and developing new professional relationships somewhat tricky. But I think that CAA has managed to sustain those tried-and-true benefits of membership in new and creative ways this past year, while also challenging itself to grow as an organization, making it a great time to join -- especially as a student or someone new to Chicago or the profession.

The 2021 Membership Drive runs from February 1 to March 15. Follow us here and on Twitter and Facebook throughout the drive for more on why you should #JoinCAA2021

Welcome to Week 5 of CAA's 2021 Membership Drive! Prizes are still available - JOIN, REFER, or RENEW now!

This week we're hearing from Jessica Smith, Digital Processing Archivist at North Park University and Archives Assistant at the Chicago History Museum (and recent graduate of Dominican University's MLIS program):

I was encouraged to join CAA as an intern at the Chicago History Museum in 2018. My BA is in Anthropology and, at the time, I wasn't quite sure how to best develop a career working with museum collections. Joining CAA exposed me to a world of LIS opportunities at museums and elsewhere in the Chicago-area that I never knew existed, and I credit the amazing people I have met through CAA as inspiring me to pursue the MLIS in 2019. Renewing my CAA membership every year is a no-brainer - it's affordable, continuously grows my professional network, and offers incredible learning opportunities at events like the Chicago Open Archives. CAA is the glue that holds the Chicago-area LIS community together - forgive the cliché - and I look forward to many more years as a member.

Remember: the first 10 new members to sign up before March 16 will receive a CAA-branded journal! If someone referred you to CAA, add their name in the Referring Member field and they could win too! We'll pick 2 referring winners at random during the members meeting in March for a gift card prize. 

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay tuned throughout the drive for more on why you should #JoinCAA2021!

Welcome to Week 4 of CAA's 2021 Membership Drive! Prizes are still available - JOIN, REFER, or RENEW now!

This week Carol Ng-He, last year's Member of the Year, shares her thoughts on the benefits of membership in CAA:

CAA is a valuable platform for my career transition from museum education to art librarianship. Since I joined CAA in 2018, I have participated in several archive open houses and events. The experiences inspired me to create an interest group dedicated to curating and exhibitions that would engage members and others in dialogues about best practices and resources in this area for archives and special collections libraries. I owe a debt of gratitude to the CAA and its Steering Committee for their support not only in forming the group, but also helping me personally to grow in the profession. I am thankful for CAA for awarding me the Member of the Year in 2020, which greatly boosts my confidence in my work. It enables me to build my professional network, and even develop friendships. CAA is one of the most welcoming and nurturing groups that I have been part of, and I look forward to many more years as a member.

Remember: the first 10 new members to sign up before March 16 will receive a CAA-branded journal! If someone referred you to CAA, add their name in the Referring Member field and they could win too! We'll pick 2 referring winners at random during the members meeting in March for a gift card prize. 

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay tuned throughout the drive for more on why you should #JoinCAA2021!